Today at Brown

Li-Qiong Wang soon will start a new phase of her life, and she’s eagerly looking forward to it.

A basic materials researcher for nearly two decades, Wang will join the Department of Chemistry this spring where her primary responsibility will be teaching. An incoming lecturer, she will start by guiding undergraduate students in the laboratory portion of Chem 0330, “Equilibrium, Rate and Structure,” which explores the electronic structure of atoms and molecules, thermodynamics, solution equilibrium, electrochemistry, chemical kinetics, and reaction mechanisms.

“My first priority is teaching,” Wang said. “I have a passion for teaching. I’ve done so much research, the next part of my life” is to teach.

A physical chemist, Wang does not expect to abandon research entirely. This fall, in fact, the 47-year-old will continue to work for the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory, where she is currently a staff scientist. Her interests center on studying nanoporous materials and using state-of-the-art nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy and magnetic resonance imaging techniques to study self-assembled functionalized nanostructural materials. Wang and her colleagues want to gain a more fundamental understanding of the porosity of electromaterials and how they may contribute to a world looking to optimize energy use.

“How you make efficient energy in many ways boils down to the materials,” she explained.

While Wang does not begin at Brown until January 2010, she will be in Rhode Island by the time school starts. That’s because her husband, Lai-Sheng Wang, joined the chemistry faculty at Brown this fall. Li-Qiong Wang wanted to make sure the couple’s youngest daughter, Selina, had a seamless transition enrolling at Barrington High School. Their older daughter, Roanna, will attend Dartmouth College beginning this fall.

Wang said she benefited greatly from the demise of the Cultural Revolution in China, a time defined in part by restrictions on educational freedoms by Mao Zedong and his followers. With education available to more people, Wang said she received great instruction in the physical sciences in high school. “I was lucky,” she said.

She enrolled at Wuhan University at 16 and earned a degree in chemistry in 1982. She earned her Ph.D. in chemistry from the University of California–Berkeley in 1991.

“I loved chemistry,” Wang said by telephone during a break at the PNL. “I was always good at it.”

At the PNL, Wang has had more than 100 papers published in which she was involved in the research. While the accolades are nice, she’s ready to pass on her knowledge and experiences to the next generation of scientists.

“I feel like being a teacher is very rewarding,” she said.